Read Online Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomaniacal Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase by Jen Lancaster - Free Book Online
Authors: Jen Lancaster
Tags: Humor, Literary, General, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, Girls, American, Biography, Essay/s, Authors; American, Art, Form, 21st Century, Fashion, Jeanne, Clothing and dress
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pint in the fridge anyway. I substituted the melted vanilla for milk the next morning on my Kix cereal and it was a little bowl of heaven.
Even though they live in a huge house, there’s only one bathroom and it is scary . There’s a wobbly, chipped claw-foot tub in the middle of the room and they keep a bucket behind the toilet because it runs all the time. Their mean Rottweiler-Lab mix Edwina uses it as a water bowl.
Once my Noni decided she’d redo the walls because she found a bucket of paint on the street. While hard at work, she accidentally slopped a little white on the red-and-black-checked floor tiles. Instead of wiping it off, she decided to make the rest of the floor match, so it looks like a bag of cotton balls spilled. It’s weird.
The worst part of the bathroom situation is that everyone goes in and out of there while other people are using it and this is very wrong . My dad and I are the only ones who not only shut but also lock the door when we’re in there.
When we stay at the house, I’m assigned to sleep in the airless back bedroom, which gives me asthma attacks because Noni won’t throw out her old horsehair mattresses. How is it not okay for me to ride a pony for half an hour, but to spare my grandmother’s feelings I must sleep on a bed that’s so full of old horsehair and dust mites that it’s been responsible for me having to go to the emergency room twice?
I seriously hate that house.
Sometimes I can talk my parents into letting me stay with my Auntie Fanny and Uncle Tony in Cambridge, a few minutes away. They have a big, nice, clean house with a huge deck off the second floor. I get to stay in cousin Stephanie’s room and try on the toe shoes she has hanging from one of the posts on her canopy bed. On the third floor, their sink is painted porcelain and their faucets are swans and when you turn the water on it looks like the biggest swan is throwing up—it’s so beautiful! But because this visit will be both brief and unplanned, I doubt I’ll get to stay there when we get to Boston.
After a delightful evening of late-night swimming and an uncensored Robert Redford movie, 38 I sleep like an angel on Auntie Virginia’s green velvet couch. Then I get ready in her private guest bathroom with its pink tub and shelves lined with every product Avon’s ever manufactured. 39
Before we leave Connecticut, I convince my Auntie Virginia to send me off with a care package. She’s the world’s best cook, and because of her, I enjoy exotic stuff rarely touched by other eleven-year-olds, like shrimp scampi and roasted peppers . . . but only if she makes it. Auntie Virginia loads me up with meatball sandwiches, macaroni salads, and sweet amaretto cookies studded with pine nuts. I hug the Tupperware containers to me all the way to Boston.
The other downside of staying with my grandparents is the food. Noni’s scrappiness extends to her cooking and she uses bizarre, greasy, gristly pieces of meat in her sauce that I’m pretty sure were originally earmarked to make couches and dog food. 40 Once, after a string of particularly horrible family meals, my father whipped out a McDonald’s bag when the Sunday gravy was served. This happened before I was born but my Noni’s still pissed off about it.
When we finally arrive in Boston a full thirty hours after we left Indiana, we pull up in the driveway and my mom dashes out and knocks on the front door, expecting to receive the conquering hero’s welcome.
Except no one’s home.
So we go across town to visit my dad’s gracious old Aunt Arabella in her immaculate Cape Cod-style home, which is full of porcelain bulldogs draped in Union Jacks. She says I can play with them, but my mom won’t let me touch them. My Auntie Abba never had any kids because she had a big career as an orthopedic nurse. Rumor has it she used to work with Dr. Salk, the guy who invented the Marco Polio vaccine, but this has never been confirmed. My Gaga, her late brother,
Even though they live in a huge house, there’s only one bathroom and it is scary . There’s a wobbly, chipped claw-foot tub in the middle of the room and they keep a bucket behind the toilet because it runs all the time. Their mean Rottweiler-Lab mix Edwina uses it as a water bowl.
Once my Noni decided she’d redo the walls because she found a bucket of paint on the street. While hard at work, she accidentally slopped a little white on the red-and-black-checked floor tiles. Instead of wiping it off, she decided to make the rest of the floor match, so it looks like a bag of cotton balls spilled. It’s weird.
The worst part of the bathroom situation is that everyone goes in and out of there while other people are using it and this is very wrong . My dad and I are the only ones who not only shut but also lock the door when we’re in there.
When we stay at the house, I’m assigned to sleep in the airless back bedroom, which gives me asthma attacks because Noni won’t throw out her old horsehair mattresses. How is it not okay for me to ride a pony for half an hour, but to spare my grandmother’s feelings I must sleep on a bed that’s so full of old horsehair and dust mites that it’s been responsible for me having to go to the emergency room twice?
I seriously hate that house.
Sometimes I can talk my parents into letting me stay with my Auntie Fanny and Uncle Tony in Cambridge, a few minutes away. They have a big, nice, clean house with a huge deck off the second floor. I get to stay in cousin Stephanie’s room and try on the toe shoes she has hanging from one of the posts on her canopy bed. On the third floor, their sink is painted porcelain and their faucets are swans and when you turn the water on it looks like the biggest swan is throwing up—it’s so beautiful! But because this visit will be both brief and unplanned, I doubt I’ll get to stay there when we get to Boston.
After a delightful evening of late-night swimming and an uncensored Robert Redford movie, 38 I sleep like an angel on Auntie Virginia’s green velvet couch. Then I get ready in her private guest bathroom with its pink tub and shelves lined with every product Avon’s ever manufactured. 39
Before we leave Connecticut, I convince my Auntie Virginia to send me off with a care package. She’s the world’s best cook, and because of her, I enjoy exotic stuff rarely touched by other eleven-year-olds, like shrimp scampi and roasted peppers . . . but only if she makes it. Auntie Virginia loads me up with meatball sandwiches, macaroni salads, and sweet amaretto cookies studded with pine nuts. I hug the Tupperware containers to me all the way to Boston.
The other downside of staying with my grandparents is the food. Noni’s scrappiness extends to her cooking and she uses bizarre, greasy, gristly pieces of meat in her sauce that I’m pretty sure were originally earmarked to make couches and dog food. 40 Once, after a string of particularly horrible family meals, my father whipped out a McDonald’s bag when the Sunday gravy was served. This happened before I was born but my Noni’s still pissed off about it.
When we finally arrive in Boston a full thirty hours after we left Indiana, we pull up in the driveway and my mom dashes out and knocks on the front door, expecting to receive the conquering hero’s welcome.
Except no one’s home.
So we go across town to visit my dad’s gracious old Aunt Arabella in her immaculate Cape Cod-style home, which is full of porcelain bulldogs draped in Union Jacks. She says I can play with them, but my mom won’t let me touch them. My Auntie Abba never had any kids because she had a big career as an orthopedic nurse. Rumor has it she used to work with Dr. Salk, the guy who invented the Marco Polio vaccine, but this has never been confirmed. My Gaga, her late brother,
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